Mettle
by Anne-Marie Te Whiu

‘This is heartbeat poetry, the kind of collection that changes the reader with salt and fire and mettle. Magnificent.’

‘Poems born from that painful place between death and rebirth, telling their truth “slant”, allowing reader and writer to understand how resiliency arrives gradually.’

‘It is rare to observe in print the diverse realities that construct the contemporary Māori diaspora. Anne-Marie’s nuanced poems masterfully weave the losses, longings and joys of being Māori in Australia with the karanga, (the spiritual call), that binds us to our ancestral homelands, the Hokianga in Far North Aotearoa, New Zealand.’

‘Mettle: of courage and grit, of pluck and resolve. This is sitting around the kitchen table, two hands smoothing out the ‘good’ or ‘day to day’ tablecloth with instinct and deliberation. This stunning debut is straight out nana-talk, poetic memoir, and weaving all the tiny-big things, all longing and heart and of the earth.’

‘I always wonder how we get through it, it being this settler colonial existence, and I think the answer is, play. This book plays with words in such a way that you can see through all the bullshit straight into the heart of our Indigenous futures. One where we fuck and grieve and love and joke and talk shit and howl for the world that has hurt us. Let us play, very seriously, very revolutionarily, very queerly, very Māori, let us play.’

‘"Mettle" suggests the ingrained capacity to meet difficulty with fortitude and resilience. Te Whiu’s poems generously weave this capacity into brilliantly understated pieces with seared edges. Her kupu, an ingrained rope pulled taut for us to walk upon, to feel the fear, the strain, and have the courage to continue forward. A simple resounding reminder of how to live this life.’

‘Mettle is a stunning debut, threading land, ocean and heart together in an expansive Māori tapestry that speaks to our present, shared moment. Mettle is alive with ancient knowing breathing possibilities into every line. An outstanding read.’

‘Anne-Marie Te Whiu’s poetic voice is bright, and new. Just listen to this line: “moonstone hues bud horizon ...” She brings the heightened power of spirited composition to the formally innovative structures of experimental poetics, and yet mixes that compositional dexterity with story-based memory. A filmic encounter in the Salvation Army Store after lockdown, or a vulnerable memory of a mother’s asthmatic attack, bring out the emotions of connection and disconnection. As well as vividly poetic storytelling, the humour here is mordant – “i recite a karakia for my brothers / they would prefer kebabs” – and in the best spirit of a bustling, diverse indigenous poetics it excels in the most tuneful, colloquial, ‘high and low’ voices of another poet from Northland, Hone Tuwhare, and that most spiritual and earthy poet of the south, Keri Hulme.’